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OCLC recently announced their VIAFbot team has finished reciprocal name authority work on the 250,000+ English biography article links in Wikipedia. In late June, the OCLC Research folks released the Linking Library Data to Wikipedia (part 1) video explaining VIAF and how the VIAFbot/Wikipedia project would integrate library authority data into Wikipedia name articles.

Just think—OCLC name authority data inserted in Wikipedia records! But wait, that’s not all—this is a reciprocal project, so those Wikipedia names are also being ingested into the VIAF authority files (social tagging). If there is a conflict, the bot will note it for human inspection on Wikipedia.

Remember in October how we reported that the IU Society of American Archivists–Student Chapter (SAA-SC) hosted a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at the Indiana University Archives? I looked up one of their edited pages and sure enough–the VIAF authority record noted that there was an updated name authority harvested from Wikipedia:

The second part of the Linking Library Data to Wikipedia video is insightful because Max Klein discusses why he helped create the VIAFbot, the value of user feedback, and what went into getting the request for the bot approved by Wikipedia. Merrilee Proffitt discusses how they plan to have the bot seek out other cooperative name authority data projects (ORCID project).

I highly recommend watching these OCLC shorts because they are short, informative, fun, and–thanks to viewing them–I can now pronounce VIAF correctly (Veeeeee F). Thumbs up!

On Saturday, October 6th the IU Society of American Archivists–Student Chapter (SAA-SC) hosted a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at the Indiana University Archives. October is American Archives Month and the group modeled their event around the Wikipedia Loves Libraries initiative.

The goal was to enhance the existing Wikipedia entries for eight former Indiana University Presidents by referencing and tapping into the amazing resources at the IU Archives. Dina Kellams, SAA-SC Advisor and Associate Archivist for the IU Archives and Chanitra Bishop, Emerging Technologies Librarian for the IU Libraries guided the students on the basics of editing in Wikipedia and helped them identify resources to justify their entries. This is a good (local) example of funneling a LAM’s expertise to users.

Remember last October when the MDG blog highlighted Wikipedia Loves Librarians? No? Well good news: you’ll no-doubt see more of these GLAM WikiProjects in October–especially during Open Access Week on the last full week of October.

The Wikipedia community has approved the automated addition of links to VIAF in Wikipedia articles. The proposal was spearheaded by the OCLC Wikipedian in Residence, Max Klein and the British Library Wikipedian in Residence, Andrew Gray. There’s a video summary of the proposal YouTube.

Approximately 4,000 Wikipedia author articles already link to VIAF. See the article on Mark Twain (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see links to VIAF as well as links to the German National Library’s authority file (PND), LCCN, and WorldCat Identities. The VIAF record for Mark Twain links back to Wikipedia (expand the About box).

Wikipedia announced a program called Wikipedia Loves Libraries, which will run throughout the month of October. Wikipedia is calling for staff from GLAMs (!), that is, galleries, libraries, archives and museums, to hold editathons at their institutions.The goal is to invite librarians and libraries users to sit themselves in front of a computer and either create or enrich Wikipedia articles. From the Wikipedia Loves Libraries page: Continue reading “Wikipedia by Librarians”